Good morning, Whitewater.
Sunday in the Whippet City will be partly sunny with a high of forty. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset 6:53, for 11h 35m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On Friday, the FW poll asked about a motorist in Pennsylvania accused of ordering automobile insurance after an accident. Over eighty percent of poll respondents thought that Michael Traveny committed an obvious fraud, with under twenty percent feeling that Traveny was simply confused about how auto insurance is meant to work.
On this day in 1950, Volkswagen begins production of the Volkswagen Type 2, known popularly as the VW Bus:
The concept for the Type 2 is credited to Dutch Volkswagen importer Ben Pon. (It has similarities in concept to the 1920s Rumpler Tropfenwagen and 1930s Dymaxion car by Buckminster Fuller, neither of which reached production.) Pon visited Wolfsburg in 1946, intending to purchase Type 1s for import to the Netherlands, where he saw an improvised parts-mover and realized something better was possible using the stock Type 1 pan.[12] He first sketched the van in a doodle dated April 23, 1947,[13] proposing a payload of 690 kg (1,520 lb) and placing the driver at the very front.[8] Production would have to wait, however, as the factory was at capacity producing the Type 1.[8]
When capacity freed up, a prototype known internally as the Type 29 was produced in a short three months.[13] The stock Type 1 pan proved to be too weak so the prototype used a ladder chassis with unit body construction.[8] Coincidentally the wheelbase was the same as the Type 1’s.[8] Engineers reused the reduction gear from the Type 81, enabling the 1.5 ton van to use a 25 hp (19 kW) flat four engine.[8]
Although the aerodynamics of the first prototypes were poor (with an initial drag coefficient of Cd=0.75),[8] engineers used the wind tunnel at the Technical University of Braunschweig to optimize the design. Simple changes such as splitting the windshield and roofline into a “vee” helped the production Type 2 achieve Cd=0.44, exceeding the Type 1’s Cd=0.48.[14] Volkswagen’s new chief executive officer Heinz Nordhoff (appointed 1 January 1948)[15] approved the van for production on 19 May 1949[8] and the first production model, now designated Type 2,[14] rolled off the assembly line to debut 12 November.[8] Only two models were offered: the Kombi (with two side windows and middle and rear seats that were easily removable by one person),[14] and the Commercial.[8] The Microbus was added in May 1950,[8] joined by the Deluxe Microbus in June 1951.[8] In all 9,541 Type 2s were produced in their first year of production.[14]….
On this day in 1862, Wisconsinites ready to defend the Union:
1862 – (Civil War) 1st Wisconsin Cavalry Mustered In
The 1st Wisconsin Cavalry mustered in at Camp Harvey, Kenosha, and left for for St. Louis, Missouri, a week later. It would go on to fight in the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863 and in the Atlanta Campaign the following year. It also helped capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis on May 10, 1865. The 1st Cavalry lost about half its men in three years: six officers and 67 enlisted men were killed in combat and seven officers and 321 enlisted men died from disease.